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The 1985 Irish local elections were held in all the local government areas on Thursday, 20 June 1985.

There were two tiers of local government areas. The state was divided into local government areas of administrative counties and county boroughs under the Local Government (Ireland) Act 1898. Within administrative counties, there was a second tier in certain areas of boroughs governed by the Municipal Corporations (Ireland) Act 1840 and the 1898 Act, urban districts governed by the 1898 Act, and towns with town commissioners governed by the Towns Improvement (Ireland) Act 1854.

The elections had been postponed from June 1984.^[1] This allowed the Local Government (Reorganisation) Act 1985 to be enacted beforehand. Each local government area was divided into local electoral areas (LEAs) to be elected on the electoral system of proportional representation by means of the single transferable vote (PR-STV).

Administrative changes

Under the Local Government (Reorganisation) Act 1985:^[2]

the borough of Galway (which previously had a 12-member borough council) ceased to be part of County Galway and became a county borough with its own 15-member city council.
County Dublin was divided into three electoral counties: Dublin—Belgard (26 members), Dublin—Fingal (24 members) and Dún Laoghaire–Rathdown (28 members). This was an increase from the 36 seats which had been in Dublin County Council. No separate election was to be held for the borough council of the corporation of Dún Laoghaire, with members elected for designated LEAs in Dún Laoghaire–Rathdown to also be the members of the borough council.
Dublin City Council was increased from 45 to 52 seats

Two Electoral Area Boundary Commissions proposed changes which were implemented by order of the minister:^[3]

Increases in memberships of councils: Clare (one extra), Cork (two extra), Donegal (one extra), Kerry (one extra), Kildare (four extra), Limerick (one extra), Sligo (one extra) and Wicklow (three extra);
Galway County Council was reduced from 31 to 30 members.^[4]

Party		Seats	±	1st pref	FPv%^[5]^[6]	±%
	Fianna Fáil	441	113	648,070	45.6	+6.5
	Fine Gael	287	5	422,045	29.7	-5.4
	Labour	60	15	109,681	7.9	-4.2
	Workers' Party	20	13	43,006	3.0	+0.8
	Sinn Féin	10	1	46,391	3.3	+1.7
	Independent Fianna Fáil	6	2	11,073	0.8	0.0
	Democratic Socialist	3	3	5,472	0.4	New
	Waterford People's Party	1	1	1,681	0.1	New
	Donegal Progressive Party	1	0	1,506	0.1	0.0
	Green	0	0	7,446	0.5	New
	Communist	0	0	593	0.0	New
	Independent			135,603	9.6	-2.1
Total				1,421,494	100.0	—

Sinn Féin, Independent Fianna Fáil and the Waterford People's Party were not registered political parties.

^ Local Elections (Specification of Local Election Year) Order 1984 (S.I. No. 6 of 1984). Signed on 12 January 1984. Statutory Instrument of the Government of Ireland. Retrieved from Irish Statute Book.
^ DofE 1986, p. vi–viii.
^ County Electoral Areas (Amendment) Order 1985 (S.I. No. 109 of 1985). Signed on 24 April 1985. Statutory Instrument of the Government of Ireland. Retrieved from Irish Statute Book.; County Electoral Areas (Amendment) (No. 2) Order 1985 (S.I. No. 110 of 1985). Signed on 24 April 1985. Statutory Instrument of the Government of Ireland. Retrieved from Irish Statute Book.
^ Galway County Council (Amendment) Order 1985 (S.I. No. 127 of 1985). Signed on 7 May 1985. Statutory Instrument of the Government of Ireland. Retrieved from Irish Statute Book.
^ "County by county first preference vote". The Irish Times. 1 July 1991. Archived from the original on 24 October 2012. Retrieved 21 June 2011. The first two digits of the Fine Gael total vote seem to be transposed in error, based on the other figures and percentages.
^ "1985 Local Election". irelandelection.com. Archived from the original on 29 March 2020. Retrieved 29 March 2020.